Category Archives: Middle East

By Ahmed Bedier Never a member of organised religious or political groups, Amir Bedier was in Rabaa to protest against Egypt’s military takeover Two years ago today, my brother Amir was one of more than 1,100 protesters killed in Rabaa Square in Cairo, Egypt. He was shot in the neck by a high-calibre…

By Miro Guzzini Al Jazeera’s journalist Ahmed Mansour (C) is greeted by supporters after being released in Berlin, Germany, June 22, 2015 (Photo: Reuters) Prominent Al Jazeera journalist and Muslim Brotherhood supporter Ahmed Mansour has been released by the German authorities, two days after he was stopped at Berlin’s Tegerl airport and detained for…

By Nafeez Ahmed We need a transformation, and it needs to cut across the Muslim and Western worlds, together Islam needs a reformation. This conclusion can only follow logically from a preceding assumption: that Islam is a problem. This has become an increasingly fashionable mantra in the post-9/11 era, especially since the rise…

By Prof George Joffé The outcome of the ‘Arab Spring’ or ‘Arab Awakening’, as many inside the region prefer to call it, has been very different from the original expectations of those who had been involved in the massive popular demonstrations that started it off. Rather than radical or even revolutionary democratic change, to enshrine…

By Shahira Amin Last week’s attack on a lawyer is a symptom of a systematic crisis of police abuse, and the president’s apology is no substitute for reforms President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi apologised to lawyers earlier this week for “the individual act” of a police officer assaulting a lawyer at a police station in the Nile Delta…

by PAUL de ROOIJ Amnesty International has issued four reports on the Massacre in Gaza in 2014 [1]. Given the scale of the destruction and the number of fatalities, any attempt to document the crimes committed should be welcomed. But these reports are problematic, and raise questions about this organization [2], including why they…

By Phyllis Bennis Negotiators in Switzerland just won a huge victory for diplomacy over war. Now we’ve got to protect it. April 03, 2015 “ICH” – “FPIF” – Negotiators in Lausanne, Switzerland just won a huge victory for diplomacy over war. The hard-fought first-stage negotiations resulted in the outlines of an agreement that will…

By Ben White The cancellation of a conference by the University of Southampton highlights questions that Israel’s apologists are desperate to keep off limits There was outrage last week when the University of Southampton cancelled a forthcoming conference on Israel and international law, ostensibly on the grounds of “health and safety”. The university had been…

Over the last three years, even when Mohammed Morsi was president, Egyptian media outlets have carried out an unprecedented campaign against Hamas. Egyptian hostility toward the movement has grown since July 2014, when many Egyptians held Hamas responsible for the bloodshed in Gaza after Israeli military strikes against the Strip. The Egyptian media have linked Hamas to several…

When King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died Jan. 23, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement that was conspicuously warm. One might have thought that considering the broad support the late king gave to the Egyptian state-led crackdown of the Brotherhood in Egypt, such a declaration would be negative at best. Within a few weeks, however, rumors…